Stake Lights

The main thing that stake lights have in common is - you guessed it - a stake. That makes them either useful for killing vampires or easy to install, so we’ll let good sense prevail and go with the latter. There seems little point in making a light that can be easily planted into the ground if it’s not also simple in terms of connectivity. Sure enough, most of these lights employ a very simple means of connection or else, in the case of solar-driven models, they’re totally self-sufficient!

More on those solar stakes: they’re invariably LED because LED draws such little power. They come with a solar panel, which charges a set of rechargeable batteries by day, which in turn power the lights by night. Bingo! You don’t even need to fuss with any wires.

The low voltage advantage

Also available in stake-form are low voltage lights, which are often easily augmented by additional lights with ‘plug and play’ ease. Low voltage lights in the garden have an obvious safety advantage in that any accident won’t result in a potential fatality. In turn, that means you don’t have to go to great lengths to bury cables, nor worry about youngsters or pets. The installation is totally safe!

Lighting types

You get all types of stakes, including the solar-powered ones and low voltage already mentioned. They can also be mains powered, which need installing as safely as possible to avoid accidents but have the advantage of not requiring a transformer or driver.

Stake lights might use any of the ‘big three’ of current lighting technologies: incandescent (halogen), LED, or fluorescent. Halogens tend to be cheaper, and deliver a crisp, natural light, whereas LEDs often require a significant initial investment but use minimal power and last for years. Somewhere in the middle of those is the CFL lamp, which is much cheaper to run than incandescent solutions, has a longer lifespan, and doesn’t generally break the bank!